Conwell-Egan’s Julia Horger fell back in love with wrestling after her mom started a club for girls

Second in an occasional series of stories about the inaugural season of PIAA girls’ wrestling.

Conwell-Egan sophomore Julia Horger has been battered, bruised, bloodied, and sick. Yet, she kept wrestling.

Her wrists have been twisted, her face mashed into the mat, her resolve nearly ground into dust.

But for years, against boys and girls, she pressed forward.

So it may have come as a shock to her mother, Jodie, when Horger recently said: “I have to start training harder.”

The realization came a few weeks ago when Horger and nine other American wrestlers from around the country flew to Estonia for what is touted as Europe’s largest wrestling tournament: the Tallinn Open.

Horger finished fourth in her 108-pound bracket, while Team USA finished third out of more than 100 teams from around the world in the girls’ freestyle division.

The trip also may have helped Horger see her own wrestling journey, which her mother nurtured by building her own club, with a fresh perspective.

» READ MORE: What was the first season of Pa.-sanctioned girls’ wrestling like? Let the people involved tell you.

“[Estonia] was a great experience,” Horger said in a recent phone interview. “It was exhausting. It was really cool to wrestle with them and see techniques from other countries.

“I was amazed. I did not know how many girls wrestled all over the world. I hadn’t thought of that. There were so many girls from everywhere, and they were all amazing. It was so cool to see.”

Horger, now 16, started wrestling at age 7 when she joined her cousin Eric’s club workouts.

Whenever Eric didn’t have a partner, Horger stepped in. But some coaches, she said, initially were reluctant to let her participate.

Eventually, though, she proved a quick study.

Still, not everyone was thrilled.

“I was kind of falling out of love with the sport because I never really had a partner. Nobody wanted to wrestle with me,” Horger said. “I felt like nobody wanted me there.”

So her mother intervened.

Jeff Moretti, one of Horger’s early wrestling coaches, had started a wrestling club called Misfits.

One day, Jodie and another mother asked Moretti if he would consider having one day a week open for just girls.

Moretti obliged, and Misfits Girls Wrestling was born.

When it first started about five years ago, Jodie said, three girls may have shown up each week.

» READ MORE: Ari Tyson won the first girls’ wrestling state title at Cherry Hill West. Her family helped power that success.

Membership grew slowly as time passed. Local gyms around Bensalem would rent them space for months at a time.

Eventually, Jodie and her husband, Rick, with help from the local community, built the Misfits Girls Wrestling gym, which they opened earlier this year.

Jodie says it is the only gym specifically for girls’ wrestling that she knows of in the area.

Now, sometimes they have to turn people away on Saturday’s after 40 to 50 girls show up.

“In the beginning,” Horger said, “I didn’t really understand why she was making Misfits. But now I understand, and it’s helped me fall in love with the sport again, and it helps a lot of little girls with wrestling.”

Jodie also sees how Misfits has transformed her daughter.

Jodie never wrestled, but she wanted to create a place where her daughter would feel valued.

“She definitely went from a very shy little girl to being more open,” Jodie said. “I’ve seen her go from getting her work in, not talking to anyone, and leaving, to now she’ll stay after and help the little girls climb the rope or use the monkey bars. It has definitely helped her communication skills.”

Chuckie Connor, Horger’s coach at Conwell-Egan, who graduated from Pennsbury in 1996 before wrestling at North Carolina, said he has been impressed by Horger’s mental development since he coached her in middle school.

“She’s got great confidence and poise,” he said. “A lot of people might be overwhelmed being at States for the first time, but she was cool as a cucumber.”

Perhaps that growth is one reason Jodie still gets emotional when she thinks about the doors open to girls across the state after the first season of PIAA girls’ wrestling.

She explained how difficult it was to watch for years as girls from Misfits endured painful matches with boys, whom she felt wrestled even more physically to avoid losing to girls.

“These girls have gotten cranked, arm-barred, twisted, and none of them want to lose, so they won’t give up those points,” Jodie said. “They’ll take the pain.”

» READ MORE: Julissa Ortiz became the first girl to win a Public League wrestling title. She’s just getting started.

Horger likes wrestling the boys, she says, because, “it makes me tougher.”

Her mother, however, prefers her daughter sticks with the girls, although she also has marveled at her resilience.

Horger had a fever and needed medication to compete in last month’s PIAA finals, where she was crowned state champion after defeating District 10 senior Madilyn Enterline from Greenville.

“It is very inspiring,” Jodie said. “It is definitely one of the toughest sports I have ever seen. It takes a lot of work and dedication, and it’s rough on your body. It was pretty incredible, especially during the week of States … seeing her going out there and pushing through and fighting so hard. I’m just so proud of her. She is a warrior.”